Tuesday, July 3, 2012

lights out (and the sisyphean task of blogging)

I apologize for not posting already this week. Like many of you, we lost power and Internet at JUTP headquarters in Calverton for much of the weekend. And since the lights came back on here, I've been focusing on the ongoing job search and another project I'm working on in Long Branch. (Some of you might already know about that, but I'll have more details in the next few days.)

In the meantime, check out this Washington Post story about the challenges of blogging, including interviews with several great D.C. bloggers and myself:

With so many blogs out there, you’ve got to have a fresh angle to get readers to notice you, said Dan Reed, who writes the Silver Spring blog Just Up the Pike. “Bring them something they don’t already have,” he said. Reed includes commentary about urban planning to give his posts a special angle.

Not everyone was amused by the article, which I admit was a little hyperbolic. Neighborhood blogging isn't a "struggle," it's something that people do when they care about their community and have something to say about it. If you're lucky, people will read what you say or you might be able to make a little money from it.

I like the point Petworthies makes, which is that bloggers often pick up the slack from newspapers who reduce their local coverage to save money. Editorial or original news-gathering content, whether in a newspaper or a blog, is expensive to produce, requiring time, money, or both. So I don't think bloggers are "complaining" by highlighting the effort they put in, but rather calling attention to the fact that local news coverage is lacking, despite its benefits to a given community.

Anyway: I've been posting updates about the derecho storm (with lots of help from You, The Reader) on JUTP's Facebook or Twitter pages. As always, check them both out for stuff that doesn't always make it to the blog.